194 REVIEWS OF BOOKS. [July 



The American Foeestry Bureau. 



1. Bcport of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year 1884. 



2. Department of Agrieulture .- Report 07i Forestry. Prepared by 



Nathaniel H. Egleston. Vol. iv. Washington, 1884. 



It has been the custom of our caustic Japanese visitors to note 

 as a striking peculiarity of British idiosyncrasy, our custom of 

 appointing a Parliamentary Committee to search out details of some 

 clamant grievance, apparently only to bury their report and details 

 in a blue-book. On the whole, as we said last month, they do 

 things better in America. The first of the two volumes now before 

 us includes in its 600 octavo pages, with illustrative lithographs, 

 reports from the chemist, botanist, entomologist, statistician, as well 

 as the Commissioner of Agriculture, on all the subjects of pressing 

 interest to farmers in the United States. In truth, each report is a 

 separate book. It gives, besides, Eeports of the Chiefs of the 

 Bureau of Annual Industry and of Forestry. Four hundred thou- 

 sand copies of this handsome well-bound volume are printed for 

 distribution out of an appropriation of 200,000 dollars. The Eeport 

 on Forestry is a similarly bound octavo of over 400 pages, containing, 

 inter alia, reports on the conditions of tree-planting, lumbering, and 

 timber supply over such a wide area as Washington Territory, the 

 Prairie States, New Hampshire, and West Virginia, collected from 

 replies sent to circulars issued by such agents as Messrs. F. B. 

 Hough, F. P. Baker, J. P. Brown, and E. W. Furnas. The coloured 

 diagrams of the percentage of woodlands in Ohio, is an unique 

 feature of the volume ; and so, too, is the map showing the distribu- 

 tion of production of maple sugar in the United States and Canada. 

 But we might cloy the appetites of our readers were we to essay 

 even a quantum of the plethora of forestal material before us. So 

 it goes meanwhile to our shelves, to return to these pages in diverse 

 forms. 



We note the opening paragraph of Mr. Egleston's general 

 report. Since the establishment of the Bureau, there has been an 

 extensive correspondence from other countries, as well as from the 

 area of the United States, making inquiries in regard to matters 

 .connected with forestry, such as the best methods of planting and 

 managing trees, their value for various purposes, their adaptation to 

 different soils and climates, the best methods of procuring, preserv- 

 ing, and planting seeds, and the like. As a mistake in tree-planting, 

 unlike a farm crop, is one of a lifetime, and there are few 

 experienced foresters in the United States, this department is simply 

 inestimable. Perhaps Sir John Lubbock's Committee might report on 

 such an organization as adapted to the forestal needs of Great Britain. 



